Medicine's Big Fat Bias

Friday, September 27, 2013 | Categories:

(AP Photo/Tom Gannam)

This week on White Coat Black Art: The big fat bias in health care.

According to Statistics Canada, close to 5,000,000 people in Canada are obese. With higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other conditions, many of them are called health-care "super-users." Officially, we refer to the morbidly obese as bariatric patients. Unofficially, my colleagues have invented all kinds of coded words that refer to them. Behind the jokes and slang are real reasons why health professionals despair at caring for morbidly obese patients.

On this week's show, a young obstetrician talks about the physically demanding task of delivering a baby when mum is seriously overweight.

A former nurse speaks of the dangers of lifting overweight patients, She now sells beds and other equipment built especially for those patients. Her latest problem? Getting hospitals to take the equipment they buy out of the storage closet.

And obesity guru, Dr. Arya Sharma of Edmonton, gives his prescription: not just better equipment but better training and an attitude adjustment for doctors.

And writer Barb Benesch-Granberg shares part of a moving blog post she wrote about the difficulty her obese mother had finding compassionate care.

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